As I watched the coverage on the major TV networks Monday night, I wondered why we should have to know all of these details. At the supermarket today, I could not characterize the cover of People Magazine, featuring a photo of a person who’d been shot being carried by police and EMTs, as anything other than trashy and exploitative.

I suppose there is a substantive difference, but I think both NPR and my blog feed the same underlying interest as the major networks and magazines - the need to know about someone else’s suffering. We can choose to learn about their suffering for our own entertainment (especially, dare I say, the gore factor), or as a chance to reflect on our own mortality and the way we live.

One further note: I found this essay entitled “Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics” via BoingBoing - written for 9/11, but equally applicable to the VT shootings.

It must be something about The Discoverers — I’ve been trying to finish it for over a year! I keep putting it down as well. I find the history fascinating, but it must be boring me, because I can’t keep reading it like most other books.

The Image isn’t like that. I was able to finish it easily and found it very enlightening, much like Postman’s book. (I actually heard of it first through Postman.)

That’s an interesting point about making revenue from ads on your blog. But I think that’s a completely different thing. You are not turning this massacre into entertainment for your readers. You are not designing logos and getting in the face of those who were just hurt and asking inappropriate questions of them. You are not milking every last angle of the story. And they’re doing it for the ads; you’re not.

That is, you are not “doing the same thing as TV networks,” anymore than a church does the same thing as a business because it collects money.

That’s my perspective, anyway.

Josh

I have a friend who majored in TV production, and he told me one day “The purpose of all media is to attract an audience for advertisers.” That’s not much of a surprise when it comes to sitcoms and other shows that explicitly exist for entertainment purposes, but it’s highly disturbing when they are using the death of our fellow humans to increase ratings.

At the same time, I’m complicit. I watched Nightline for the first time ever, and while we’re not a Nielsen household, I’m sure their ratings do go up during times of tragedy. They offer a public service, but it’s also entertainment, and sometimes that mixed purpose is unpalatable.

On a different level of complicity, I have ads on my blog (or rather, Amazon book links). If I blog about a hot news topic, and get more traffic and ultimately more revenue, I’m doing the same thing as the TV networks. What’s the way out?

Thanks for your thoughts.

kevin

No. No, you’re not. It’s bread and circuses, MSNBC style.